Curriculum Vitae

Justin Thaler
Personal Information
Full Name: Justin Ross Thaler
Email: justin.thaler@georgetown.edu
URL: http://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/
Research Interests
Verifiable Computation, Algorithms for Massive Data Sets, Computational Learning Theory, Quantum
Computing
Education
Ph.D. November 2013 - School of Engineering and Applied Sciences,
Harvard University, Cambridge MA
Adviser: Michael Mitzenmacher
B.S. 2005-2009 - Yale University, New Haven, CT
Summa Cum Laude
Positions
• Assistant Professor. Department of Computer Science, Georgetown University,
Washington D.C. August 2016-present.
• Research Scientist. Scalable Machine Learning Group. Yahoo Labs, New York, NY.
June 2014-July 2016.
• Research Fellow. Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, Berkeley, CA. August
2013-May 2014.
• Ph.D. Student. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. September 2009-July 2013.
• Adjunct at Center for Computing Sciences, Institute for Defense Analyses, Bowie, MD
(2009-2014), Research Intern during Summer 2009.
Academic Honors
- NSF CAREER Award. Project Title: The Polynomial Method in Complexity and Cryptography (2019).
- Best Newcomer Paper Award, International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) (2016).
- Best Paper Award, Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA) (2014).
- Best Paper Award, International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP),
Track A (2013).
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Recipient (2010).
- National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow (2009-2012).
- Phi Beta Kappa (2009).
- Yale University Computer Science Prize (2009). Awarded by Yale University’s Department of Computer
Science to the graduating senior who ranks highest in scholarship.
- Anthony D. Stanley Memorial Prize (2009). Awarded by Yale University’s Department of Mathematics
for excellence in pure and applied mathematics.

Publications
Journal Papers
(J1) A Nearly Optimal Lower Bound on the Approximate Degree of AC0 . Mark Bun and Justin
Thaler. SIAM Journal on Computing, 2019. (Special Issue for FOCS 2017, Extended Version of C10).
(J2) On the Power of Statistical Zero Knowledge. Adam Bouland, Lijie Chen, Dhiraj Holden, Justin
Thaler, Prashant Nalini Vasudevan. SIAM Journal on Computing, 2019. (Special Issue for FOCS
2017, Extended Version of C11).
(J3) Verifiable Stream Computation and Arthur-Merlin Communication. Amit Chakrabarti,
Graham Cormode, Andrew McGregor, Justin Thaler, and Suresh Venkatasubramanian. SIAM Jour-
nal on Computing, 2019. (Extended Version of C22).
(J4) Dual Polynomials for Collision and Element Distinctness. Mark Bun and Justin Thaler.
Theory of Computing, 2016.
(J5) Parallel Peeling Algorithms. Jiayang Jiang, Michael Mitzenmacher, and Justin Thaler. ACM
Transactions on Parallel Computing. (Special issue devoted to SPAA 2014, Extended version of C23).
(J6) Dual Lower Bounds for Approximate Degree and Markov-Bernstein Inequalities. Mark
Bun and Justin Thaler. Information and Computation, 2015. (Special issue devoted to ICALP 2014,
Extended Version of C28).
(J7) Annotations in Data Streams. Amit Chakrabarti, Graham Cormode, Andrew McGregor, and
Justin Thaler. ACM Transactions on Algorithms, 2014.
(J8) Streaming Graph Computations with a Helpful Advisor. Graham Cormode, Michael Mitzen-
macher, and Justin Thaler. Algorithmica, 2013. (Extended Version of C36).
(J9) External-Memory Multimaps. Elaine Angelino, Michael T. Goodrich, Michael Mitzenmacher,
and Justin Thaler. Algorithmica, 2013. (Special issue devoted to ISAAC 2011, Extended Version of
C35).

Conference Papers
(C1) Quantum Lower Bounds for Approximate Counting via Laurent Polynomials. Scott Aaron-
son, Robin Kothari, William Kretschmer, and Justin Thaler. Preliminary version in Conference on
Quantum Information Processing (QIP), 2020.
(C2) Approximate Degree, Secret Sharing, and Concentration Phenomena. Andrej Bogdanov,
Nikhil Mande, Justin Thaler, and Christopher Williamson. In International Conference on Random-
ization and Computation (RANDOM), 2019.
(C3) Ad Hoc Multi-Input Functional Encryption. Shweta Agrawal, Michael Clear, Ophir Frieder,
Sanjam Garg, Adam O’Neill, and Justin Thaler. In Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science
(ITCS), 2020.
(C4) The Large-Error Approximate Degree of AC0 . Mark Bun and Justin Thaler. In International
Conference on Randomization and Computation (RANDOM), 2019. Invited to Theory of Computing
(Special Issue for RANDOM 2019).
(C5) Sign-Rank Can Increase Under Intersection. Mark Bun, Nikhil Mande, and Justin Thaler. In
International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), 2019.
(C6) Quantum Algorithms and Approximating Polynomials for Composed Functions with
Shared Inputs. Mark Bun, Robin Kothari, and Justin Thaler. In Symposium on Discrete Algorithms
(SODA), 2019.
(C7) Approximate Degree and the Complexity of Depth Three Circuits. Mark Bun and Justin
Thaler. In International Conference on Randomization and Computation (RANDOM), 2018.
(C8) Doubly-efficient zkSNARKs without trusted setup. Riad S. Wahby, Ioanna Tzialla, abhi
shelat, Justin Thaler and Michael Walfish. In IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P),
2018.
(C9) The Polynomial Method Strikes Back: Tight Quantum Query Bounds via Dual Poly-
nomials. Mark Bun, Robin Kothari, and Justin Thaler. In ACM Symposium on the Theory of
Computing (STOC), 2018. Also presented at the 2018 Conference on Quantum Information Process-
ing (QIP) as a plenary talk. Invited to Theory of Computing.
(C10) A Nearly Optimal Lower Bound on the Approximate Degree of AC0 . Mark Bun and Justin
Thaler. In IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS ), 2017. Accepted to
SICOMP (Special Issue for FOCS 2017).
(C11) On the Power of Statistical Zero Knowledge. Adam Bouland, Lijie Chen, Dhiraj Holden,
Justin Thaler, Prashant Nalini Vasudevan. In IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
(FOCS ), 2017. Accepted to SICOMP (Special Issue for FOCS 2017).
(C12) Full Accounting for Verifiable Outsourcing. Riad S. Wahby, Ye Ji, Andrew J. Blumberg,
abhi shelat, Justin Thaler, Michael Walfish, and Thomas Wies. In Conference on Computer and
Communications Security (CCS), 2017.
(C13) A High-Performance Algorithm for Identifying Frequent Items in Data Streams. Daniel
Anderson, Pryce, Bevin, Kevin Lang, Edo Liberty, Lee Rhodes, and Justin Thaler. In Internet
Measurement Conference (IMC), 2017.
(C14) Reliably Learning the ReLU in Polynomial Time. Surbhi Goel, Varun Kanade, Adam Klivans,
and Justin Thaler. In Conference on Learning Theory (COLT), 2017.
(C15) Determining Tournament Payout Structures for Daily Fantasy Sports. Christopher Musco,
Maxim Sviridenko, and Justin Thaler. In Meeting on Algorithm, Engineering & Experiments
(ALENEX), 2017. Invited to ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics (Special Issue
for ALENEX 2017).
(C16) Improved Bounds on the Sign-Rank of AC0 . Mark Bun and Justin Thaler. In International
Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), 2016.
(C17) Lower Bounds for the Approximate Degree of Block-Composed Functions. Justin Thaler.
In International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), 2016.
(C18) Semi-Streaming Algorithms for Annotated Graph Streams. Justin Thaler. In International
Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), 2016.
(C19) Space Lower Bounds for Itemset Frequency Sketches. Edo Liberty, Michael Mitzenmacher,
Justin Thaler, and Jonathan Ullman. In Principles of Database Systems (PODS), 2016.
(C20) A Framework for Estimating Stream Expression Cardinalities. Anirban Dasgupta, Kevin
Lang, Lee Rhodes, and Justin Thaler. In International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT),
2016. Best Newcomer Paper Award. Invited to ACM Transactions on Database Systems
(Special Issue for ICDT 2016).
(C21) Streaming Verification in Data Analysis. Samira Daruki, Justin Thaler, and Suresh Venkata-
subramanian. In International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC), 2015.
(C22) Hardness Amplification and the Approximate Degree of Constant-Depth Circuits. Mark
Bun and Justin Thaler. In International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming
(ICALP), 2015.
(C23) Variable Selection is Hard. Dean Foster, Howard Karloff, and Justin Thaler. In Conference on
Learning Theory (COLT), 2015.
(C24) Verifiable Stream Computation and Arthur-Merlin Communication. Amit Chakrabarti,
Graham Cormode, Andrew McGregor, Justin Thaler, and Suresh Venkatasubramanian. In Computa-
tional Complexity Conference (CCC), 2015.
(C25) Parallel Peeling Algorithms. Jiayang Jiang, Michael Mitzenmacher, and Justin Thaler. In Sympo-
sium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), 2014. Best Paper Award. Invited
to ACM Transactions on Parallel Computing (special issue for SPAA 2014).
(C26) Distribution-Independent Reliable Learning. Varun Kanade and Justin Thaler. In Conference
on Learning Theory (COLT), 2014.
(C27) Faster Private Release of Marginals on Small Databases. Karthekeyan Chandrasekaran, Justin
Thaler, Jonathan Ullman, Andrew Wan. In Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS),
2014.
(C28) Annotations for Sparse Data Streams. Amit Chakrabarti, Graham Cormode, Navin Goyal, and
Justin Thaler. In Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), 2014.
(C29) Time-Optimal Interactive Proofs for Circuit Evaluation. Justin Thaler. In International
Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO), 2013.
(C30) Dual Lower Bounds for Approximate Degree and Markov-Bernstein Inequalities. Mark
Bun and Justin Thaler. In International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming
(ICALP), 2013. Best Paper Award for Track A. Invited to Information and Computation
(special issue for ICALP 2013).
(C31) Cache-Oblivious Dictionaries and Multimaps with Negligible Failure Probability. Michael
Goodrich, Dan Hirschberg, Michael Mitzenmacher, and Justin Thaler. In Mediterranean Conference
on Algorithms (MedAlg), 2012.
(C32) Verifying Computations with Streaming Interactive Proofs. Graham Cormode, Justin Thaler,
and Ke Yi. In VLDB, 2011.
(C33) Faster Algorithms for Privately Releasing Marginals. Justin Thaler, Jonathan Ullman, and
Salil Vadhan. In International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP),
2012.
(C34) Attribute-Efficient Learning and Weight-Degree Tradeoffs for Polynomial Threshold
Functions. Rocco Servedio, Li-Yang Tan, and Justin Thaler. In Conference on Learning Theory
(COLT), 2012.
(C35) Verifiable Computation with Massively Parallel Interactive Proofs. Justin Thaler, Mike
Roberts, Michael Mitzenmacher, and Hanspeter Pfister. In USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in
Cloud Computing (HotCloud), 2012.
(C36) Continuous Time Channels with Interference. Ioana Ivan, Michael Mitzenmacher, Justin
Thaler, and Henry Yuen. In International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2012.
(C37) Hierarchical Heavy Hitters with the Space Saving Algorithm. Michael Mitzenmacher,
Thomas Steinke, and Justin Thaler. In Meeting on Algorithm, Engineering & Experiments
(ALENEX), 2012.
(C38) Practical Verified Computation with Streaming Interactive Proofs. Graham Cormode,
Michael Mitzenmacher, and Justin Thaler. In Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS),
2012.
(C39) External-Memory Multimaps. Elaine Angelino, Michael T. Goodrich, Michael Mitzenmacher,
and Justin Thaler. In International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC), 2011.
(C40) Streaming Graph Computations with a Helpful Advisor. Graham Cormode, Michael Mitzen-
macher, and Justin Thaler. In European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA), 2010.
(C41) Graph Covers and Quadratic Minimization. Nicholas Ruozzi, Justin Thaler, and Sekhar
Tatikonda. In Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, 2009.

Invited Papers and Workshop Papers

(I1) Catching Lies (and Mistakes) in Offloaded Computation. Michael Mitzenmacher and Justin
Thaler. Communications of the ACM (CACM), February 2016. (Invited Technical Perspective).
(I2) Data Stream Verification. Justin Thaler. Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer Berlin Heidelberg,
2015. (Invited Survey Article).
(I3) Peeling Arguments and Double Hashing. Michael Mitzenmacher and Justin Thaler. Appears
as an invited paper in Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, 2012.
(I4) On the Zero-Error Capacity Threshold for Deletion Channels. Ian Kash, Michael Mitzen-
macher, Justin Thaler, and Jonathan Ullman. In Information Theory and Applications Workshop
(ITA), 2011.

Manuscripts
(M1) A Note on the GKR Protocol. Justin Thaler. 2015.
(M2) Verifiable Computation Using Multiple Provers. Andrew J. Blumberg, Justin Thaler, Victor
Vu, and Michael Walfish. 2014.

Selected Invited Talks and Lecture Series

∎ Interactive Proofs.
• Two-hour survey talk during Boot Camp for the Simons Institute Proofs, Consensus, and
Decentralizing Society Program, Fall 2019.
∎ Approximate Degree: A Survey.
• Invited talk at CMO 2018 workshop on Analytic Techniques in Theoretical Computer Science
∎ The Polynomial Method Strikes Back.
• Invited talk at the Harvard/MIT/MSR Theory Reading Group (October 2017)
• Invited talk at NYU Theory Seminar (December 2017)
• Invited talk at University of Maryland’s QuICS Seminar (January 2017)
∎ Verifiable Computing: Between Theory and Practice.
• Invited survey talk at the STOC 2017 workshop on Probabilistically Checkable and Interactive
Proofs (PCP/IP): Between Theory and Practice (June 2017).
∎ A Nearly Optimal Lower Bound on the Approximate Degree of AC0 .
• Invited talk at BIRS 2017 workshop on Communication Complexity and its Applications II
• Invited talk at Columbia University Theory Seminar (April 2017)
∎ Chebyshev Polynomials, Approximate Degree, and their Applications.
• Invited survey talk at the FOCS 2016 workshop on (Some) Orthogonal Polynomials and their
Applications to TCS.
∎ Verifiable Computation.
• Invited speaker at the Fourteenth Bellairs’ Crypto-Workshop (Invited Lecture Series). Delivered
15 hours of lectures surveying modern techniques for proof-based verifiable computation. Workshop
organized by Claude Crépeau.
∎ Interactive Proofs and Argument Systems.
• Invited speaker at the Summer School on Secure and Oblivious Computation and Outsourcing at
the University of Notre Dame. Delivered 3 hours of lectures surveying modern techniques for
proof-based verifiable computation. Summer school organized by Marina Blanton.

Grants and Funding

- NSF Award #1918989.
- Project Title: Automatically Parallelizing Approximate Data Analysis with Mergeable Summaries.
- NSF Program: Scalable Parallelism in the Extreme.
- Role: PI.
- Amount: $614,203.
- Dates: October 2019-September 2023.
- NSF CAREER Award #1845125.
- Project Title: The Polynomial Method in Complexity and Cryptography.
- NSF Program: Algorithmic Foundations.
- Role: PI.
- Amount: $549,045.
- Dates: June 2019-May 2024.
- Research Seed Grant from Georgetown University’s Massive Data Institute.
- Project Title: Enabling Analysis of Sensitive Data via Zero-Knowledge Proofs.
- Role: PI.
- Amount: $40,000.
- Dates: July 2017-June 2018

U.S. Patent Applications

- Automatic Fantasy Sports Data Analysis Method and Apparatus. Michael Lazarus, Maxim
Sviridenko, and Justin Thaler. Application number US20180001215A1. Application filed June 30,
2016 and published January 4, 2018.
- Fantasy Sports Data Analysis for Game Structure Development. Justin Thaler, Maxim
Sviridenko, Edo Liberty, Ron Belmarch, Jerry Shen, and Prerit Uppal. Application number
US20170095739A1. Application filed October 6, 2015 and published April 6, 2017.

Open Source Software Development

- Co-creator and core contributor to an open source library of highly optimized streaming algo-
rithms, called DataSketches: A Java software library of stochastic streaming algorithms (url: https:
//datasketches.github.io). The library is used within several companies, including Oath/Yahoo,
Amazon, and Splice Machine. It also has been incorporated into a popular open source graph database
library called Gaffer that is maintained by the British intelligence agency GCHQ, and into a low-
latency open source data store called Druid. As of October 2018, the library is averaging over 55,000
downloads per month from Maven Central.
Teaching
- COSC 548 – Streaming Algorithms (Fall 2016, Fall 2018)
- ANLY 550 – Structures and Algorithms for Analytics (Spring of: 2017, 2018 (2 sections), 2019)
- COSC 544 – Probabilistic Proof Systems (Fall 2017)

Professional Activities
- PC Member: STOC 2019, SOSA 2019, SODA 2018, FSTTCS 2017, ICALP 2016, ALENEX 2016,
SDM 2015.
- Grant Reviews and Panels: National Science Foundation Panel (2017, 2019), External reviewer
for Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (2018) and Israel Science Foundation (2019).
- Workshop Organization: Co-organizer of Capital Area Theory Day (2018). Co-organizer and chair
of the 5-day 2019 workshop on Probabilistically Checkable and Interactive Proof Systems at Simons
Institute for the Theory of Computing.
- Journal reviewer: SICOMP, Computational Complexity, Journal of Cryptology, Theory of Comput-
ing, SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, Information and Computation, Algorithmica, Communi-
cations of the ACM, Discrete and Computational Geometry, Theoretical Computer Science, Frontiers
in ICT (Big Data Section), Information Processing Letters.
- External conference reviewer: STOC, FOCS, CCC, SODA, CRYPTO, ICALP, ITCS, RANDOM,
PODS, NIPS, ICDT, PODC, DISC, TCC, ESORICS, ESA.

Student Advising and Committee Membership

- Ph.D. advisor for Pryce Bevan, currently a second-year Ph.D. student in Georgetown University’s
Department of Computer Science (Fall 2017-present).
- Ph.D. advisor for Shuchen Zhu, currently a first-year Ph.D. student in Georgetown University’s De-
partment of Computer Science (Spring 2018-present).
- Mentor of postdoctoral scholar Nikhil Mande (Spring 2019-present).
- Co-mentor of postdoctoral scholar Michael Clear, joint with Adam O’Neill (Fall 2017-Fall 2018).
- Hosted 5-week visit from Nikhil Mande, graduate student at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
- Ph.D. qualifying and thesis committee member for Jeffrey Cohn, Georgetown University Department
of Physics (thesis defense April 2019).
- Ph.D. proposal and thesis committee member. Samira Daruki, University of Utah (thesis defense in
May 2017).
- Mentored two Georgetown University undergraduates, Pryce Bevan and Daniel Anderson, on a year-
long research project on streaming algorithms that led to publication (C13) above.
- Co-host for Yahoo Labs intern Christopher Musco, Ph.D. student at MIT (Summer 2015).